TODAY’S HIGHLGHT

1851: Maine becomes the first US state to enact a law prohibiting alcohol.

OTHER EVENTS

637: Arab Muslim army vanquishes Persians at battle of Al-Qadisiyya, opening Persia to Arab conquest.

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte issues a liberal constitution in France.

1863: During the Civil War, Union Major General William T Sherman writes a letter to his wife, Ellen, in which he commented, “Vox populi, vox humbug” (The voice of the people is the voice of humbug).

1881: US President James Garfield is shot by a disappointed office seeker and dies 80 days later.

1886: President Grover Cleveland, 49, marries Frances Folsom, 21, in the Blue Room of the White House. (To date, Cleveland is the only president to marry in the executive mansion.)

1897: Mark Twain, 61, is quoted by the New York Journal as saying from London that “the report of my death was an exaggeration”.

1917: Brazil declares war against Germany and seizes German ships.

1924: Congress passes, and President Calvin Coolidge signs, a measure guaranteeing full American citizenship for all Native Americans born within US territorial limits.

1941: Baseball’s “Iron Horse”, Lou Gehrig dies in New York of a degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 37.

1946: Italy holds a referendum which results in the Italian monarchy being abolished in favour of a republic.

1949: Transjordan is renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

1953: Queen Elizabeth II of Britain is crowned in Westminster Abbey, 16 months after the death of her father, King George VI.

1955: Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agree to thaw relations between their countries.

1964: The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed.

1965: Almost 200 miners are killed in coal mine explosion near Fukuoka, Japan.

1966: US space probe Surveyor 1 lands on the moon and begins transmitting detailed photographs of the lunar surface.

1974: Jigme Singye Wangchuk is crowned King of Bhutan at age 18, becoming the youngest monarch in the world.

1976: Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles is mortally injured by a bomb planted underneath his car; he dies 11 days later. (Prosecutors believed Bolles was targeted because he had written stories that upset a liquor wholesaler; three men were convicted of the killing.)

1979: Pope John Paul II arrives in his native Poland on the first visit by a pope to a Communist country.

1981: The Japanese video arcade game Donkey Kong is released by Nintendo.

1983: Half of the 46 people aboard an Air Canada DC-9 are killed after fire breaks out on-board, forcing the jetliner to make an emergency landing at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

1986: For the first time, the public can watch the proceedings of the US Senate on television as a six-week experiment begins.

1987: US President Ronald Reagan announces he is nominating economist Alan Greenspan to succeed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

1992: In a referendum, Danes reject the Maastricht Treaty on a strongly united European Union.

1995: A US F-16 fighter jet is shot down over the Serb stronghold of Banja Luka. The pilot hides and is rescued by a helicopter team six days later.

1996: Hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu makes his first speech since winning the Israeli election and pledges to continue peace talks with the Palestinians.

1997: Timothy McVeigh is convicted of murder and conspiracy in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. (McVeigh is executed in June 2001.)

1998: Space shuttle Discovery blasts into orbit from Cape Canaveral on NASA’s last mission to ailing Russian space station Mir.

1999: The African National Congress wins resoundingly in South Africa’s second post-apartheid elections.

2000: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission grants amnesty to apartheid death squad commander Eugene de Kock and other former police in the killings of 14 people.

2001: The Colombian Government and leftist guerrillas agree to swap sick prisoners in the first major breakthrough since peace talks began more than two years before.

2002: Irish rock star Bono and US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill end 12-day tour of Africa, raising awareness of the problems faced by the world’s poorest continent.

2003: Mars Express, a European Space Agency craft carrying an unmanned British-built probe to the planet Mars, is launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

2004: Former rebel commanders capture a strategic town in eastern Congo, setting off a crisis that threatens the Central African country’s fragile transitional government and a peace agreement that ended five years of civil war.

2005: Israel releases hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, fulfilling a months-old pledge officials hope will help bolster Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and his moderate allies.

2006: Some 5,000 Somalis denounce the United States and call for Islamic law at a protest in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where Islamic militias were battling a secular alliance that the Islamists accused the US of backing. The United Nations General Assembly concludes a conference on AIDS by promising to set “ambitious national targets” but falling short of setting exact financial goals for the fight against the disease. Canadian authorities announce they foiled a home-grown terrorist attack to set off bombs outside Toronto’s Stock Exchange, a building housing Canada’s spy agency and a military base.

2007: US authorities break up a suspected Islamist terrorist cell planning an attack to destroy John F Kennedy Airport in New York, kill thousands of people, and trigger an economic catastrophe by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through populous neighbourhoods.

2008: Nepal’s deposed king agrees to peacefully leave the royal palace in Katmandu and live as a common citizen after the Himalayan nation declared itself a republic in the previous week.

2010: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects international criticism of a deadly raid against a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza earlier this week, saying the blockade of the Palestinian territory is needed to prevent missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

2011: A UN report says Southern Sudan soldiers attacking a rival ethnic group fired indiscriminately on unarmed men, women and children at a remote Nile River village, killing or wounding hundreds of civilians. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announces his bid for the Republican presidential nomination during an appearance in New Hampshire. A 73-year-old man opens fire in the Yuma, Arizona, area killing five people and wounding one other before fatally shooting himself. A judge in Placerville, California, sentences serial sex offender Phillip Garrido to life in prison for kidnapping and raping Jaycee Dugard; Garrido’s wife, Nancy, receives a decades-long sentence.

2012: Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is sentenced to life in prison for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising that ousted him.

2013: Syrian rebels and Hezbollah guerrillas battle in their worst clashes yet inside Lebanon, a new sign that the civil war in Syria is increasingly destabilising its fragile neighbour.

2014: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swears in a national unity Government, formally ending a crippling seven-year split with his Islamic Hamas rivals.

2015: President Barack Obama signs the USA Freedom Act, extending three expiring surveillance provisions of the 9/11-era USA Patriot Act. Fifa President Sepp Blatter announces his resignation as head of soccer’s governing body, just four days after being re-elected to the post, amid a widening corruption scandal.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jan Sobieski, king of Poland (1624-1698); Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, French writer (1740-1814); “Count” Alessandro Cagliostro, Italian charlatan (1743-1795); Ion Bratianu, Romanian statesman (1821-1891); Thomas Hardy, English writer (1840-1928); Constantine II, exiled King of Greece (1940- ); Charlie Watts, English drummer with the Rolling Stones (1941-2021); Dana Carvey, US actor/comedian (1955- ); Lasse Hallstrom, Swedish director (1946- ); Wayne Brady, actor-comedian (1972- ); Justin Long, actor (1978- ); ZZ Ward, singer-songwriter (1986- ).

— AP